Ann Southworth. Lawyers of the Right Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition. Chicago, U.S.: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
This article examines how conservative lawyers have strategically shaped the legal profession and political landscape in the United States, contributing to democratic backsliding by promoting ideologies that concentrate legal power within partisan movements. Based on interviews with over seventy lawyers affiliated with conservative and libertarian nonprofit organizations, the study reveals how attorneys play central roles in advancing political agendas through law. These lawyers, often aligned with social conservatism, libertarianism, or business interests, are shown to collaborate across ideological lines with the support of mediator organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. These networks have helped unify the conservative legal movement and shift the legal profession and its institutions to the political right. By increasing the political influence of lawyers within the conservative movement, the article suggests that attorneys are not only legal professionals but also political actors who may contribute to the erosion of democratic norms. However, internal tensions between elite and populist factions within the movement may challenge its long-term cohesion.